Debt relief or cancellation is not the solution: good governance is

By Wudu Lado

July 1, 2005 — While calls across the globe by Live 8 musicians, concert organizers and other African sympathizers for debt relief or out right cancellations and more aid to
Africa are commendable, such actions are not going to
alleviate the rampant poverty we see in Africa today.
The widespread poverty is due to a combination of
kleptocracy, mismanagement and plunder of the
continents resources coupled to bad governance by the
continent’s finest – the ruling elites. It seems that
those who were tasked with guarding state coffers
could not resist the urges and temptations to dip
their sticky hands into the treasure and rob the
continent blind. Forgiving or cancelling Africa’s
debts and increasing its foreign aid is not the answer
if the underlying problems that cause the existing
poverty, in the first place, are not addressed. Such
actions will only serve to reward and embolden
Africa’s ruling elites to continue stealing from state
coffers. Furthermore, such actions (debt forgiveness
or cancellations and foreign aid increments) will only
serve to foster more dependence and reliance on
foreign aid. Good governance, that is answerable and
responsible to the African electorate, is the key to
uplifting Africans from the cesspool of poverty.

It is not that Africans are incapable of good
governance rather the ruling elites in Africa have
denied Africans the opportunities to exercise good
governance. Most often these cliques are made up of a
cabal of opportunists who use tribal politics to
entrench themselves in power and further their agenda
of fleecing the state and driving the country into
poverty in order to solidify their grip over the
government. This clique has neither developmental
agenda nor the people’s welfare at heart apart from
living in decadence. It is these cliques that has
raped Africa and plunder her wealth. It is this clique
that lives in grand opulence and a lavish lifestyle
while the majority of Africans live in abject poverty.
For the quality of life to be uplifted in Africa, the
ruling clique should be eradicated and tossed into
oblivion as the French did during the French
Revolution.

Neither debt relief nor increased foreign aid is the
solution; rather sanctions against the ruling African
cliques are the key to fighting poverty in Africa. The
problem is that the ruling African cliques spend their
ill-gotten wealth in the foreign countries in
educating their children, shopping-sprees for their
wives and daughters, and hording the rest in foreign
bank accounts. In order to address the poverty and bad
governance in Africa, the international community
should sanction the African ruling elites, deny them
legitimacy, freeze and seize their foreign bank
accounts and assets, and return those stolen wealth
back to their rightful owners – the poor African
people. Until such time, debt relief and increased
foreign aid will just be another band-aid solution to
Africa’s woes that will remain chronic and perennial.

Wudu Lado is a Sudanese residing in Ottawa, Canada.